Page 4 of The Spark Between Us

Chapter Two

Braden

I hadno idea what I’d gotten myself into when I said yes to Finn, but after he referred to his sister as a physics dork for the third time, I decided she sounded pretty harmless.

I pictured a female version of Albert Einstein with wild wiry hair and a slide rule in her pocket. I realized that stereotype made me sound like an uninformed Neanderthal, but Finn had painted a picture, and my imagination followed to an unimaginative place.

So, I agreed.

What else could I say to my oldest friend who’d talked the cops out of arresting me, wing-manned me into my first girlfriend, and defended me in front of my irate parents—all before we were sixteen? Not to mention bailing me out of the biggest shit show of my life just a couple years ago.

Even if he was too nice to say it—or think it—I owed him.

By transference, I guess that meant I owed his younger sister too.

I knew very little about her except for the whole science dork thing, which only told me she had nothing in common with me.

Probably better that way. If she and I had different interests and separate lives, we’d have less chance of getting in each other’s hair.

“And dude, in case it wasn’t clear...she’s not your type,” Finn said.

I laughed at the insinuation. Warning me to stay away from his little sister felt like a throwback to junior high school when I’d have jumped on any warm-blooded female. By high school, I had standards, and they didn’t include studious Sarah who rolled her eyes like a typical twelve-year-old and made it clear I bored her.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” I said.

He laughed to cover the awkwardness. “Sorry, but I needed to put it out there. Sarah doesn’t really date, so she’s not the kind of girl you hook up with.” I wondered how much he really knew about his sister. I didn’t date anymore either, but I sure as hell hooked up. Probably not how he wanted to think about his sibling.

I also wished he were here so I could punch him.

Finn rattled off a few more details about Sarah, all of which made me confident that keeping my hands off her would pose no problem. He described an uptight workaholic who kept to herself and had her head so much in the clouds that she bumped into things and sometimes showed up at work in pajama bottoms.

“Stop trying to paint an awful picture, okay? I’m not some unhinged sex addict who won’t be able to keep my hands to myself.”

At the very least, I can resist a clumsy female Einstein.

I vaguely remembered her, always outside rigging up some science fair project that inevitably made a mess. I was from a family of boys, but if I’d had a sister, I imagined she’d act just like Sarah, timid around my friends because we were loud, sweaty, and generally up to no good.

I remembered her wide-eyed look when she saw us drinking beer once while still in high school. “But the drinking age is twenty-one. You’re breaking the law,” she’d said primly, hands on her hips like a schoolmarm. After that, I went out of my way to avoid her. I didn’t need the judgement from a prepubescent know-it-all.

Finn had turned a corner when he got to college. That was around the time his dad was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. His outlook toward himself and his family changed, and he instantly went from being an aimless college kid to an organized economics major who was already making plans to be the only man in the house.

When his dad died two years later, Finn took on the role in earnest, saved his first million by successfully gaming the stock market, and served as fierce protector of his mom and five sisters ever since. That included finding housing for his dorky sister now.

A week ago, I’d have greeted the vaguest suggestion that I get a roommate with a loud hell no.

And yet...here I was.

“I’ve got the extra bedroom just sitting here empty. Might as well put it to good use,” I heard myself saying. I didn’t bother to add that part of the reason it stood empty was that I couldn’t bear to go in there. Finn didn’t know I still wasn’t over the shit my ex said when she left. But in two years, I hadn’t set foot in that room. Each time I’d attempted it, my chest had seized up and I’d felt gutted all over again. Maybe it would help me move on if someone else used the space and I could view it as a spare room again.

“It’s fine. Really. Can she cook at least?” I asked.

His bark of a laugh answered that question. “Not unless you like a lot of salads and baked potatoes with weird toppings like mustard.”

“Nothing wrong with those, as long as they’re next to a steak.”

“My thought exactly,” Finn chuckled. “I think you’ll get along fine. You’re opposite enough. You can stay in your separate corners, you shoveling down animal entrails and her eating some fake steak made from jackfruit.”

“Is that food, or are you trying to be funny?” I asked. People didn’t try to make steak out of fruit, did they? Finn’s laugh told me that maybe his kooky sister did. “I’m glad you find this all so amusing.”

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